Ideas

In Search of the ‘Tomato King’

Finding a Mexican Migrant Politician, Rooted in California Soil

There is only one person more obsessed than I when it comes to the memory of Don Andrés Bermúdez: his son, Andrés Junior. Junior lives with his family in the place where he came of age, a spacious ranch home his father acquired in 1993, on the outskirts of Winters, California, in the western Sacramento Valley.

In a nod to his Catholic upbringing, Junior crosses himself when he passes the town cemetery, where his father is buried. He bought the burial plot adjacent to his father’s, so that he can be …

by Adrián Félix |

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In Honduras, Defending Your Land Can Be Deadly | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

In Honduras, Defending Your Land Can Be Deadly

Amid Deepening Climate, Criminal, and Economic Crises, Indigenous Activists Are Being Murdered

by Christopher A. Loperena |

On May 28, 2023, the body of Martín Morales Martínez was found floating in the Gama River in Triunfo de la Cruz, Honduras. Morales Martínez was Garifuna—a people descended from …

I’m Proud to Be Un-American

A New Poll Shows the Rest of the Country Hates the Golden State—And That’s a Good Thing

by Joe Mathews |

I’m not really American, and I couldn’t be prouder of that.

I hope you, my fellow Californians, feel the same way.

Because sometimes there’s no greater compliment than an intended insult.

This time, …

What Should Your Local Public Square Look Like?

People With Deep Community Ties Share What Keeps Them—And Their Neighbors—Rooted to Place and One Another

The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective …

What the Wonkapocalypse Can Teach Us

An Immersive Experience Gone Wrong Shows Us the Perennial Emptiness of Carefully Curated Escapes from Reality

by Jackie Mansky |

Last month, an “immersive” Willy Wonka event took over my news feed.

Normally, I’d keep scrolling.

Promoters market these voguish multisensory experiences—which are supposed to literally immerse you in an environment through …

What Bruce Springsteen Taught Me Then—And Teaches Me Now

On 40 Years of Listening to the Sonic Squall from the Boss’s Soul

by Tom White |

Bruce Springsteen was the first artist I saw in concert—in 1976, when I was 15. He had recently graced the covers of Time and Newsweek, and journalist Jon Landau, who …


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